D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[EzekielRaiden]

I suggest you stop trying to fit your particular preferences into everyone else's games and specifically their imaginary themed games (like a Viking Campaign). You will be much happier.

Given I have never tried to do that, and have only been responding to people telling me I'm some whackadoodle nutjob, I find this comment not particularly useful nor informative.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Given I have never tried to do that, and have only been responding to people telling me I'm some whackadoodle nutjob, I find this comment not particularly useful nor informative.

No one is thinking you're a whackadoodle nutjob but asking to play x non-viking person in a specifically themed viking campaign to see if the person will exercise their veto power only to chastise them for not allowing "you" to play against themed type is not particularly useful or informative either.

EDIT: You've been conversing with @SableWyvern for days through this thread over a myriad of topics. The person sounds reasonable enough to consider genuine requests by their players. Wouldn't you agree?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This thread probably contains at least a thousand posts where various people, including me, have pointed out that no, they can't. If this point isn't already clear, it never will be.

How do you keep track of things that are established during the course of the game, and avoid contradictions occurring ten sessions later?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No one is thinking you're a whackadoodle nutjob but asking to play x non-viking person in a specifically themed viking campaign to see if the person will exercise their veto power only to chastise them for not allowing "you" to play against themed type is not particularly useful or informative either.

EDIT: You've been conversing with @SableWyvern for days through this thread over a myriad of topics. The person sounds reasonable enough to consider genuine requests by their players. Wouldn't you agree?

Frankly? No! I wouldn't agree that they seem like they would accept genuine requests from their players. What I have read has given me the distinct impression that unless the players toe the line quite closely, they will be summarily shown the door.

 

[SableWyvern]

How do you keep track of things that are established during the course of the game, and avoid contradictions occurring ten sessions later?

If it's an NPC name, I usually hope one of my players remembers it, or has written it down, because I probably have no clue and, even if I wrote it down, I won't be able to read whatever I scrawled on my tablet (if I can even find where I wrote it).

For other stuff? Honestly, for a reasonable amount of things that were established on very short notice, if they haven't come up again, it's quite similar -- I rely on the group memory and player notes (one of my players generally takes some pretty good notes that are extremely useful to everyone).

If it's something less impromptu, then I most likely have a pretty good handle on it just via my general game prep routines and, if I need to, can refer to my much-easier-to-understand written-outside-the-session notes.

I'm currently working on setting up a pretty comprehensive Obsidian vault for my next game, which may help organising and keeping track of things in the future, but we'll see whether or not it still devolves into incoherent scrawling.

 

[Hussar]

It does seem like "sandbox" labels several modes of play... family resemblances rather than a fixed set of identifying qualities. Which should be unsurprising given Wittgenstein's famous observation.

/snip
I would count (i) power-independence of world from player-characters coupled with (ii) a commitment to following the players very valuable if not central. That would be in addition to (iii) GM and game designer prep. being conceded some standing in the fiction even prior to entering the knowledge of players.

I would think @Faolyn would disagree here. After all, you are saying exactly what I just said and I was apparently wrong.

 

[Hussar]

That’s because you have it wrong again. I prepare a lot of encounters that I do not “expect” the players to encounter, because the players often surprise me and I try to be prepared for anything.

Overall, I would say the players actually encounter maybe 10% of the stuff I prepare.

Yikes. That's brutal.

 

[zakael19]

It also relates to the idea that the players would try and minimise rolls so as to avoid failure - in your Stonetop game (as I've understood it, at least, from your description) and in BW and TB2e and Prince Valiant, the rolls aren't things to be avoided. They're the mechanical engine of the game, the produces these outcomes like the PCs being rained on, their magical markings washing down their faces, etc. Which as you and your player said is genuinely like a film or a novel.

Yeah absolutely. That foraging with an impending storm? I mean, he needed more mystical supplies, but he could’ve decided to set that aside; so off he went Foraging (and rolled a 7-9, which in this case I suggested had an obvious consequence: he found what he needed but the storm opened up).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yikes. That's brutal.

It’s possible I over-prepare, but if I enjoy doing it it doesn’t matter. And I recycle stuff for other games.

 

[AlViking]

Yeah, even in light of reading plenty of other PBTAs and such - going back and looking at DITV for instance lays things out so clearly. Knowing how to run BITD and PBTAs is informing how I look at Daggerheart.


FWIW, in the game of Stonetop we had on Sunday during the End of Session portion one of the players highlighted how much they loved that the current arc of play “feels like something out of the Lord of the Rings, like tke journey bits.”

Most media we look at (novel and movie alike) tends to do scene framing or montages to give the implication of distance and exploration. I try and use the same thing as we are traveling through the Great Forest and such - montage style bits where we describe the varied terrain, do some Q & A to get into the character’s heads, some trail banter, and then frame into a scene of more intense stuff.

Maybe as simple as an impending storm, the thunder pealing in the distance. What do you do? And they decide to put a leanto together for shelter (they have mystical markings right now on their faces that gives them the power to move quiet and stealthy in nature but rain might wash it off..), and the Blessed goes off foraging for more ritual plants, and rolls terribly so it takes him too long and the heavens open up, and he gets lost and the Heavy goes out with the kid’s hound to try and track him down…

I’m planning to take this sort of scene frame exploration over to Daggerheart when I start running it, it just feels like it combines the best features of time and distance passing with interesting and grabby (or just “appropriate” - like the quiet clearing of gorgeous flowers and tart but edible berries for them to resupply with and discover that the kid hates sour stuff) situations.

If that kind of thing is something your party enjoys, which is great, I don't see that it has much to do with having played a different game system. It's certainly similar in tone to things I've tried over the years in D&D. It's just general advice on setting mood and tone that applies to all games and sounds an awful lot like some of the advice from the DMG and various other sources I've read over the years.